Several recent theories have ascribed different roles to contextual or background cues in Pavlovian conditioning. In the Rescorla-Wagner model background cues compete with the conditioned stimulus for associative value. Performance of the conditioned response is determined by the absolute associative value of the conditioned stimulus. In scalar expectancy theory, conditioned stimulus and background values are learned independently of each other and the performance of the conditioned response depends on the ratio of these two values. The effects of various pretraining, temporal, and reinforcer manipulations are discussed from the points of view of these theories. Autoshaping experiments are proposed which are designed to provide empirical evidence about the role of contextual cues in the acquisition and performance of a conditioned response.